Friday, July 12, 2013

A convicted killer and reputed street boss in the Colombo crime family
who lived in Somerville wants a federal judge to throw out his guilty
plea in a sweeping racketeering indictment, claiming that someone forged
his signature on the plea agreement.

Writing from a federal
prison in North Carolina, Ralph F. DeLeo, 70, this week filed a strongly
worded motion to vacate the plea, records show. He is slated for
release in October 2025, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

He
said in the filing, made public on Thursday, that “an unknown officer
of the court affixed a forged signature to the plea agreement and
introduced it to the court” as the defendant’s.

Neither DeLeo’s
lawyer at sentencing, held last year in US District Court in Boston, nor
a spokeswoman for US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz could immediately be
reached for comment.

In the filing, DeLeo bristled at what he described as a “fraud upon the court.”

He
said the “extraordinary circumstances stated in the affidavit and here
in this motion has eviscerated the defendants [sic] Fifth Amendment
rights,” adding that he wants to scrap the plea and the agreement and
obtain “such other and further relief.”

DeLeo pleaded guilty in
November to racketeering and weapons charges. Prosecutors said he ran a
criminal enterprise known as the DeLeo crew, which engaged in cocaine
and marijuana dealing, extortion, and loan sharking. His team operated
in Massachusetts, Arkansas, Florida, and New York, according to
authorities.

He received a 235-month sentence, with credit for the previous three years he had already spent behind bars.

In
1977, DeLeo was serving a 25- to 40-year sentence in the state prison
at Walpole for kidnapping and armed robbery when he escaped while being
treated at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain.

He was
later captured in a bank robbery case in Ohio and struck a deal with
prosecutors. He confessed that he was the triggerman who fatally shot a
Columbus doctor, Walter Bond, on Oct. 31, 1977, at the behest of another
doctor and later testified against that physician.

DeLeo was
sentenced to 15 years to life for the slaying, but in 1991, Governor
Richard F. Celeste of Ohio granted DeLeo clemency for his crimes in the
Buckeye State. Authorities returned to him to Massachusetts to finish
his earlier sentence, and he was released in 1997.

DeLeo said at
his November sentencing that he received a commutation from Celeste
because he “accepted responsibility for my actions and freed an innocent
party,” and he also accused a federal agent of threatening to have him
killed in prison, according to a transcript.

“I ask the court to
consider my age, health, and [the agent’s] threats to have me killed in
prison and his actions in furtherance of that threat against my life ...
in determining the Court’s sentence,” DeLeo said at the time. “Thank
you for your time and indulgence.”

Assistant US Attorney Timothy
E. Moran laid into the mobster during the hearing, describing him as a
man capable of wreaking havoc, the transcripts shows.

“I think
it’s safe to say of the defendants who are regularly brought in this
court, Mr. DeLeo has to be among the most dangerous both on a personal
basis and organizationally,” Moran said. “The ... arsenal of weapons and
criminal history, frankly, speak for themselves. They describe a person
who was both capable and equipped for great violence, and it would be
hard to exaggerate that.”

As part of his new motion on the plea,
DeLeo included multiple court documents that contained his signature,
including the alleged forgery.

“Plea bargain agreements are contractual in nature and are to be construed accordingly,” he wrote.